


benediction

by maricolous



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Healing, M/M, Post-Canon, but at a glacial pace, heavy handed metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 02:38:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13649697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maricolous/pseuds/maricolous
Summary: Thomas has trouble stomaching Flint's methods for obtaining freedom. Flint has trouble being sorry.





	benediction

Thomas won’t look at him. They haven’t spoken since they’ve left the plantation, the fields set ablaze and the men making their break for freedom. Flint hopes that they’ve all found it, in the way that one hopes all good people find freedom and happiness, but he doesn’t care as deeply about it as Thomas does.

There are words in Thomas’ mouth, he knows. They crawled up his throat and curled up on his tongue days ago and they wait now, wait for him to unleash them onto Flint with bared claws. Flint wishes he would opens his mouth and end it but he also knows Thomas and he knows it will be a slow and brutal thing when he finally speaks.

The wind carries cane ash with it, days and miles from the source, and they land on everything. The white of Thomas’ shirt is stained with an increasing number of grey smudges, evidence of the way he tries to rub each ash off of himself. Or evidence, perhaps, of the way he’s determined to remind Flint of it every time he looks at him.

It’s evening when they finally rest again, more for the sake of the horses than themselves. There’s not much light left to see by but when Flint looks this time, Thomas is looking back at him.

Before he can open his mouth to speak, Thomas is reaching out. Flint closes his eyes at the touch of Thomas’ thumb to his forehead and from the way Thomas wipes his thumb across it, Flint knows an ash landed on him. They’re still for a moment, the both of them, thinking of the men who did not escape for good, those who did not escape at all, and Thomas finally drops his hand. Flint keeps his eyes shut and imagines a streak of ash across his forehead.

It’s a blessing and a curse. _Repent_ , the image says in Thomas’ voice, _repent for your sins_.

“It shouldn’t have been like that,” Thomas says.

These are not the words Flint has been expecting. They are damning, yes, but they are not barbed with poison. They are damning and tired. He opens his eyes and looks at Thomas in the dim light left as the sun sinks beyond the horizon. It occurs to him, as he takes in the bags under Thomas’ eyes and scruff on his chin, that they haven’t yet learned all the ways in which the other has changed. Thomas knows he was a pirate but doesn’t understand what that truly means. Flint knows what Thomas has been forced to do but doesn’t understand what’s been done to him. Familiar and unfamiliar all at once, the two of them. For the second time in as many weeks, Flint feels the ground shift under him.

“I did what I had to do to get us out,” he says, feeling suddenly and viciously ill as he says the words.

“We could have warned them, James,” Thomas says, sharper. More the old him. “People died.”

“Yes. People died, Thomas,” Flint snaps, holding his gaze. “And I am sorry for that. But I am not sorry that I got you out of that place.”

“What you did was selfish.”

It feels like a slap. It feels like he deserves it. He’d said the very words himself not a month ago, on a ship to Georgia, to a man who’d taken everything he fought for with four simple words. ‘Thomas Hamilton is alive.’ So he is. Flint can’t bring himself to hate Silver even as the reminder of him causes bile to rise up in his throat.

“Perhaps it was. But I will not apologise for freeing us.”

“Will you apologise for killing good men?”

“I would be apologising for a very long time if I were to do that.”

Thomas looks at him then, really and truly looks, as if he’s only just seen him. Flint looks back, guilt and relief at war in his gut.

“Oh, James,” Thomas says, something in his posture softening. “You’ve done terrible things, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Flint says.

Thomas’ mouth on his is not forgiveness. But it’s something akin to acceptance, that the man Long John Silver delivered into his arms is not the James McGraw he’d once known, though he is also not the monstrous pirate captain the men at the plantation had whispered of before his arrival.

“I killed your father,” Flint murmurs, when the light is gone and they lie curled together under the cover of darkness.

“That one you needn’t apologise for,” Thomas says.

The next kiss is a thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> why did i do this? we just don't know. but we can [talk about it](http://kateburnhams.tumblr.com) if you want.


End file.
